Custom PC UK -julkaisun June 2018 -irtonumeron sisällysluettelo

It’s written for 40-something, white weirdy beardies who still argue about Rush There’s been a bit of a backlash against Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One recently. People say it’s a load of badly written wish-fulfilment tosh, filled with gratuitous and unnecessary pop culture references. That it’s a book that only serves to make people who grew up with 1980s games and films feel as if their knowledge somehow makes them important. To which I say ‘Yeah, good isn’t it?’ But then I’m that book’s target audience – it’s written for 40-something, white weirdy beardies who still get into arguments about whether Rush are any good or not. I can understand why other people don’t get on with it. Whatever you think of Ready Player One’s sometimes dodgy characterisation and over-reliance…

NZXT launches new liquid coolers NZXT has just expanded its award-winning line-up of Kraken all-in-one liquid coolers with two new models. The new Kraken X72 (pictured) is the company’s first liquid cooler to feature a 360mm radiator, taking on the might of Corsair’s recently released H150i Pro. The cooler is fully equipped with three 120mm NZXT Aer P fans, as well as full RGB lighting, which can be controlled via NZXT’s CAM software, along with the cooling system itself. Meanwhile, the new NZXT Kraken M22 sits at the more affordable end of the scale, offering a single 120mm fan, but also featuring RGB lighting that can again be controlled through NZXT’s CAM software, and the ability to synchronise with NZXT’s HUE components. The other cost-saving element is that the M22…

SUPPLIER www.scan.co.uk / MODEL NUMBER HX-KB2RD2-UK/R1 It’s definitely a buyer’s market when it comes to mechanical gaming keyboards, as there are so many products from which to choose, as well as a huge array of switch types. This situation can make it tricky for manufacturers to offer a different product, especially at the low end of the market. At the high end, however, premium materials and features make it a little easier to stand out from the crowd, which is where keyboards such as HyperX’s Alloy Elite RGB can make an impact. At £150 inc VAT for the RGB version, the Alloy Elite RGB competes directly with the likes of Corsair and SteelSeries’ various premium RGB models, such as Corsair’s K70 RGB. However, HyperX has gone all out with…

SUPPLIER www.ginger6.com If you’re an avid competitive PC gamer, a fast 144Hz gaming monitor provides a huge leap in responsiveness over a regular 60Hz screen, assuming your graphics card can keep up with the required frame rate. The smoother frame rate will help you to see enemies faster and react a millisecond sooner. Plus, it just looks better than a regular display. What’s more, you don’t have to spend a fortune either, as proved by the AOC G2590PX, which costs just £277incVAT. This 24.5in 1080p gaming monitor also features AMD FreeSync, to eliminate tearing artefacts if you’re using an AMD GPU. It has a stylish design with a minimal bezel on three sides, along with a decent array of connections and a fully adjustable stand. At the time of…

SUPPLIER www.overclockers.co.uk / MODEL NUMBER CMR16GX4M2C3200C16 Unlike the other dual-channel kits on test this month, Corsair has opted for a single controllable channel to govern each of its Vengeance RGB DDR4 modules, so you just get a bar of single colour shining through the heatsink. The company’s Vengeance RGB series was one of the first ones to ditch the cables used by the very first kits of RGB memory, such as GeIL’s Evo X, instead using the system management bus to communicate with the RGB controller. It comes in white and black versions, and otherwise looks identical to Corsair’s Vengeance LED kits. Until, that is, you install Corsair’s Link software and start playing around with its lighting and synchronising effects. Corsair’s software, which you can also use to control…

SUPPLIER www.overclockers.co.uk / MODEL NUMBER CMR32GX4M4C3200C16 Corsair’s dual-channel kit (see p44) performed admirably against the competition, but the Vengeance RGB modules have more of an advantage as we step up to quad-channel kits, as there’s a much bigger price margin between it and G.Skill’s Trident Z RGB equivalent. Not only that, but our quad-channel G.Skill kit sported looser latency timings than the dual-channel kit we reviewed this month, with slightly higher figures than Corsair’s Vengeance RGB. The price difference can’t be excused by tighter timings here, then – you’re just spending an extra £50-60 for the G.Skill’s light show. The more modules you add, the better RGB memory kits generally look, and that’s definitely the case with both quad-channel kits this month. Corsair’s Vengeance RGB system can only dish…

SUPPLIER www.ebuyer.com The Razer Lancehead Tournament Edition has several claims to fame. It has a whopping 16,000dpi resolution, it can track at up to 450ips and its sensor has a resolution accuracy of 99.4 per cent. That’s all well and good, of course, but these numbers pale in comparison to the real headline here: it’s available in pink! Black, gunmetal grey and mercury white are all options too, but where’s the fun in that? It’s actually a bit of a shame Razer went for a rather muted pink tone, as we could totally get on board with a proper electric shade of pink. It’s the gunmetal version that we’ve been sent for review, though, and it’s a very attractive beasty. Razer seldom slips up when it comes to aesthetic…

SUPPLIER www.amazon.co.uk BenQ’s Zowie gaming peripheral brand isn’t exactly a household name but, unlike plenty of other peripherals manufacturers right now, one product it can offer is an up-to-date ambidextrous gaming mouse. In fact, the company offers a comprehensive range of them, including small, medium and large versions, each with a high or low-profile design. The ZA12 we’re reviewing here is the medium-sized, high-profile model. The profile refers to the height of the bump that sits under your palm. In general, lower-profile mice are preferred by fingertip and claw-grip users – the Razer Diamondback being the classic example – while a high-profile mouse is better suited to palm-grip users. Whichever grip style we used, though, the ZA12 felt good in our hands. The shape is as basic as it…

African people visited Britain as early as the 1st century AD as part of the Roman Legions Last month I reviewed Kingdom Come: Deliverance, a medieval RPG designed to authentically portray an area of 15th century Bohemia. I enjoyed its picturesque scenery and interesting systems design, but the game also launched under a cloud of controversy due to the past statements and actions of the head of Warhorse Studios, Daniel Vavra. Vavra is a game industry veteran who also made the 2003 open-world game Mafia, making him a celebrated figure within the Czech Republic. However, Vavra caused outrage when, in reference to Deliverance’s representation of ethnic minorities, he stated on Twitter that ‘there were no black people in medieval Bohemia. Period’. Vavra’s comments received widespread condemnation, with many people calling…

DEVELOPER ForgottenEmpires/ PUBLISHER Microsoft/ WEBSITE www.ageofempires.com Remastering a classic game is a difficult art, as you need to know which aspects of a game to refine and improve, and which parts to leave alone. It’s different with every title. Some games only need a dab of graphical make-up to rekindle their brilliance, while others require a delve into the game’s controls and systems. For its Age of Empires redux, Forgotten Empires has focused almost entirely on visual improvements. It looks absolutely spiffing. Every aspect of the original game has been overhauled. New terrain textures and building models have been designed specifically to be viewed at 1080p and 4K resolutions, while the new unit models are rendered at 32 angles compared to the original game’s eight, making them look three-dimensional, even…

Virtual reality represents the ultimate gaming fantasy – the ability to be truly immersed in a virtual world, to view and interact with an environment that surrounds you in glorious stereoscopic 3D. Even better, it’s no longer a fantasy; functioning VR headsets have been commercially available for the past two years. If you play games on your PC, you even have a choice of two headsets – Facebook’s Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive. Yet while virtual reality may no longer be limited to science fiction, there is still debate regarding whether it’s worth investing in a VR headset right now. Being cutting-edge tech, both headsets are still fairly expensive and technically demanding, and although the VR experience has clear potential to be revolutionary, there are clear problems that are…

When Facebook bought Oculus Rift for $2 billion US back in 2014, it must have set off some familiar ‘we’ve missed the boat’ ripples in the Microsoft boardroom. While January 2015 saw the announcement of its futuristic HoloLens, it took a further two and a half years before consumers could enter Microsoft’s virtual realm: Windows Mixed Reality (WMR). It’s a bit of a shame, then, that the launch was more of a pfftt than an explosion. WMR was introduced with the release of Windows 10 Fall Creators Update in October 2017, when Microsoft also announced ‘a range’ of Windows Mixed Reality headsets. It was easier to grab Lord Lucan for a chat than to get hold of a headset to test, though, and when it came to available content it…

Acer Windows Mixed Reality Headset/ £400 inc VAT SUPPLIER www.microsoft.com The Acer is the cheapest-looking WMR headset on test this month, with a striking blue design that’s positively in-your-face compared with the futuristic HP equivalent. It’s also quite light, feeling almost identical to the Lenovo Explorer when worn. Indeed, the only way we could tell the difference with our eyes closed was by feeling the texture of the cushioning fabric on the headband. It seems highly likely that both headsets are made in the same factory, with precisely the same design of foam around the side of the goggles. Don’t worry about this foam coming off, though, because it’s designed to strip away and perhaps even be replaced in the future; it connects in a Velcro-like manner. With the…

The two pages you’re reading now were written on the morning of this column’s deadline. Not because I’m a terrible procrastinator – this time around, anyway – but because the original review I wrote prompted the company behind the product to completely rethink its approach to market. Originally, you’d have been reading a scathing review of the PureAudio Speech Development Kit (SDK) from Andrea Electronics, a long-standing name in the audio industry. Billed as the one-stop system for high-quality speech control of Internet of Things (IoT) and voice-assistant projects running on a Raspberry Pi, the SDK proved to be anything but. During testing, the kit was found to have several issues. For starters, there was a mandatory USB sound card that was tied to the software purely for licensing purposes,…

One of the biggest innovations in the past decade was G-Sync, and later Freesync The past few months, and certainly the whole of 2018, has been one of the most insipid periods since I started work in the IT industry over 20 years ago. There’s just been a distinct lack of interesting and innovative new products, the lifeblood of the PC industry and the mana of PC enthusiasts. For example, while Coffee Lake marked the biggest increase in generation-to-generation performance from an Intel CPU in several years, all Intel really did was bolt an extra two cores on to its previous mainstream chip architecture. In fact, Skylake X is arguably more innovative than Coffee Lake; at least it has a new cache hierarchy. The GPU industry is an even more…

It could learn your daily routine, pre-loading content and pre-starting apps For Windows users, Microsoft has already tried to bring some artificial intelligence and machine features to PC users courtesy of its Photo app, Office 365 and Cortana.Has anyone really used these features to any meaningful extent? I know I haven’t. Recently, however, the company has opened the scope of its AI features wider to developers, with support for the industry standard ONNX format, as well as Visual Studio for UWP and standard Win32 apps. Most people’s obvious interaction with AI so far has come via voice assistants on phones or dedicated shout-boxes at home, such as Amazon Echo, Google Home or Apple’s smart speaker. These products are already very popular, with 65 million smart home devices sold in 2017.…

The power circuitry and heatsinks only became mildly warm during stress testing SUPPLIER www.scan.co.uk There are finally numerous small form factor options for AMD Ryzen systems, with every major manufacturer offering a mini-ITX model with either the X370 or B350 chipset. Asus and Gigabyte have shown their hands with the excellent ROG Strix X370-I Gaming and reasonable AB350N-Gaming WiFi, and this month sees MSI launch its B350I Pro AC. Costing £109 inc VAT and scheduled to reach UK shores in the next month or two, the B350I Pro AC is focused on the lower end of the price spectrum, competing against Gigabyte’s AB350N-Gaming WiFi, and leaving the Asus board to play in its own £180 price league. Clearly, if you’re after a larger choice of premium dinky motherboards, Intel’s…

We’re pleased to see an IPS panel included at this price SUPPLIER www.amazon.co.uk Acer’s Nitro 5 tries to handle gaming in a portable machine for under £1,000. That’s a tall order, but Acer hopes the GTX 1050 GPU and Core i7 processor will do the job. The Core i7-7700HQ is one of last year’s Kaby Lake parts, but it still has four Hyper-Threaded cores and a base clock of 2.8GHz – enough power to avoid game bottlenecks and handle general computing without breaking a sweat. Meanwhile, the GeForce GTX 1050 is a mid-range Pascal chip with a 1354MHz core, 640 stream processors and 4GB of memory, so it should have just enough grunt to play games at 1080p if you’re prepared to drop the settings. It’s also a good…

Eternal Eye Spy Pen / £33 inc VAT In some ways, the Eternal Eye Spy Pen represents the technological manifestation of the idea that you should never meet your heroes. When you’re a kid, spy gadgets are so cool; when confronted by the reality, they feel rather mundane. The Eternal Eye Spy Pen is a slightly ostentatious ballpoint pen concealing a 1080p camera, microphone, motion sensor and a 16GB memory card to store the data from them. You have to open up the pen to switch between video and picture mode, but you can otherwise control it all via a button on the top. Unscrewing the middle of the pen reveals a USB connector through which you can access the data on it. The sound and video quality are unremarkable,…

How we test We’ve pitched a total of six memory kits, all with RGB lighting, against each other to see which kits overclock the furthest, as well as which ones offer the tightest timings, and the best lighting, software and value. RGB memory is far more widely available in dual-channel kits with two memory modules, rather than quad-channel kits, and we’ve tested the lot, with kits from ADATA, Corsair, G.Skill and Team Group. Our quad-channel kits, meanwhile, consist of G.Skill’s Trident Z RGB and Corsair’s Vengeance RGB. All kits have a 3200MHz rated frequency, with dual-channel kits having 16GB and quad-channel kits having 32GB. To test each kit, we ran through some of our usual benchmarks, including the CPC RealBench suite, plus Cinebench R15 and Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation…

The flattened opaque acrylic inserts look great SUPPLIER www.cclonline.com / MODEL NUMBER F4-3200C14D-16GTZR When we last saw G.Skill’s Trident Z RGB dual-channel, 3200MHz DDR4 memory kit (see Issue 169, p19), it cost just £169 inc VAT, but since then, as with all DDR4 memory, prices have shot up and it now retails for a wallet-smashing price of £258 inc VAT. All of which brings us to two questions. Firstly, is G.Skill’s premium memory still worth buying after this £89 price increase? Secondly, newer, cheaper kids on the block, such as ADATA’s XPG Spectrix D40 (see p43), now offer better value. We love several aspects of G.Skill’s Trident Z RGB memory. It just looks fantastic, with black and gunmetal grey heatsinks that, despite looking imposing, only reach to a height…

SUPPLIER www.ccl.online / MODEL NUMBER F4-3200C16Q-32GTZR There are quite a few versions of G.Skill’s Trident Z RGB memory kits available, including different flavours of 3200MHz kits. However, while it’s good to have tight latency timing, the lower-latency kits cost a lot more, and the performance impact is minimal. The CL14 dual-channel G.Skill kit we tested this month was the fastest on test, but only ever by tiny amounts, and it costs a lot more than the CL16 G.Skill kit, which has similar timings to the other dual-channel kits we tested. The quad-channel version we’re reviewing here also has these looser timings, which are very similar to those of its nemesis over the page – Corsair’s 32GB Vengeance RGB memory kit (see p48). The CL14 G.Skill kit retails for nearly…

SUPPLIER www.box.co.uk The Roccat Kova at first appears to be an absolute bargain, costing just £45 inc VAT, yet featuring a plethora of buttons, RGB lighting and an on-board ARM processor. However, the native 3,500dpi resolution of its optical sensor is the giveaway to the fact that this mouse is a getting a little long in the tooth now. Released at the end of 2015 (when it went straight onto our Elite list and stayed there), its age is a perfect example of how left-handed and ambidextrous mice aren’t given quite the love of right-handed models. Not that Roccat is the only company whose ambidextrous options are limited to older models, of course. Even Logitech has only two ambidextrous models, one of which is seven years old. But back…

Rust is infamous for its brutality, and justifiably so DEVELOPER Facepunch Studios / PUBLISHER Facepunch Studios / WEBSITE https://rust.facepunch.com/ Rust’s setup is familiar now. You awake on a desolate and vaguely post-Soviet island with nothing but a rock and a torch. From these humble beginnings, you need to scavenge for resources such as wood and rock, and craft basic survival items such as stone tools, spears and bows. From here, it’s a constant upward drive to improve your lot – hunting animals, building shelters and searching for more advanced resources and equipment. After four years in Early Access, Rust’s systems are expertly refined. Simple actions such as bashing a tree with your rock have a lovely sense of fluidity and impact, while most of the game’s weapons are easy to…

Dissecting the hardware is all well and good, but ultimately it’s the games that dictate what kind of experiences are possible while wearing these headsets, and whether the investment is worthwhile. Two years since release, there are plenty of options. We’ve chosen eight of the best games to acquaint yourself with VR, all of which are playable with either the Vive or the Rift. However, a few are slightly better on one headset than another. BEGINNER GAMES The Lab / FREE DEVELOPER Valve ‘/ BEST ON Either system The Lab is an ideal introductory VR game, not least because it’s free. It’s essentially a collection of mini-games designed to demonstrate VR’s capabilities, but each game is designed with Valve’s typically surgical refinement and quirky sense of humour. There are eight…

While Windows Mixed Reality headsets are available to consumers, big companies and developers have been given the option to buy early editions of Microsoft’s flagship HoloLens headset. It’s a true augmented reality device, with all the computing power built into the glasses, but with a narrow field of view. We’ve tried HoloLens – under strict supervision from Microsoft – and in many ways, we were suitably impressed by the way it overlaid reality in specific apps. The best example was an architectural project, where you could zoom into the building, add or remove walls, and generally get an idea of what the final project would be like. Microsoft set some unrealistic expectations at the launch of HoloLens, though, with an on-stage demo showing what it would be like to play…

Pinball FX2 VR/ £10.99 from Steam Pinball FX2 VR is the one game that keeps drawing us back into VR. While standing in front of a 3D pinball machine is never going to be quite the same as the real thing, it’s surprisingly close – and also allows for added atmosphere, such as an underwater feel in one of the sea-themed machines. Your initial investment buys you access to three machines, which is plenty to start. We’re still trying to get to grips with the Epic Quest one, having only scored around 7 million points so far. There’s also an extension pack for around £20. Tiny Town VR/ £10.99 from Steam Tiny Town VR is one for the kids. It’s a weird mix between Minecraft (which is also available in…

This month’s coffee table book comes from retrocomputing author Mark Hardisty, best known for his expansive two-volume epic A Gremlin in the Works (reviewed in Issue 168). Where A Gremlin in the Works took up a combined 500 pages, though, Hardisty’s latest creation is considerably more compact. Inlay, reviewed here in tradebook paperback format rather than the more eye-catching hardback release, has under 100 pages. Each page is full-colour and covers a range of classic eight- and 16-bit games from Adventure Quest and Android Attack through to Thing on a Spring, Zool and Quondam. You’ll find no screenshots though. Inlay instead focuses on the artwork that went with each title to catch people’s eyes as they scanned the shop shelves. Computer game artwork is a bit of a lost art,…

When the claim is philosophical or political, it’s harder to prove if it’s nonsense It’s really hard to debunk a statement that doesn’t make a testable claim. If someone declares they’ve invented a perpetual motion device, it’s pretty straightforward to expose them. One simply has to examine the device and have a good laugh before going home satisfied the laws of physics are still safe. But when the claim is political or philosophical, it’s much harder to prove if it’s nonsense. That’s the case with a recent viral piece in The Guardian, which has been popular on social media not because it’s good, but because it’s ridiculous, and dangerous. The piece, headlined ‘How video games are fuelling the rise of the far right’, is written by a chap called Alfie…

The Core i7 CPU will handle any game and most applications SUPPLIER www.dell.co.uk Dell’s Inspiron 15 7000 Gaming (7577) aims to offer abundant gaming ability without the gregarious looks and high prices of Alienware machines. It’s a smart system. The lid’s dark magnesium alloy is only disturbed by a red Dell logo, and the same colour rings the touchpad. The keyboard has an unobtrusive white backlight, and the metal is matt and plain – not brushed. Meanwhile, the slatted front edge conceals two speakers, while the back has more slats that hide exhausts. It takes more inspiration from business laptops than gaming machines, which may be preferable, depending no your tests. It has a sleek design, and there’s no disputing Dell’s build quality either. The keyboard base and the…

PROCESSORS TESTS: We use Custom PC RealBench 2015, Cinebench and Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation, installed on Windows 10 Home 64-bit, and record the power draw of the test PC. These tests cover a broad range of performance characteristics, including image editing, gaming, video encoding and 3D rendering. We run all tests at stock speed and at the CPU’s highest overclocked frequency. GRAPHICS CARDS Graphics cards are mainly evaluated on how fast they are for their price. However, we also consider the efficacy and quietness of the cooler. Every graphics card is tested in the same PC, so all results are directly comparable. CUSTOM PC REALBENCH 2015  Our benchmark suite, co-developed with Asus, simulates how people really use PCs – a higher score is better. You can download them from…

You can control each of the five LEDs independently SUPPLIER www.amazon.co.uk / MODEL NUMBER AX4U320038G16-DRS As the second cheapest 3200MHz 16GB dual-channel RGB memory kit on test, the ADATA XPG Spectrix D40 is a more affordable option than G.Skill’s Trident Z RGB if you want to add a splash of RGB pizzazz to your PC. In fact, if you’re prepared to step down to 2400MHz, you can buy the same kit for under £180 inc VAT if you shop around. The fairly loose timings of 16-18-18-38 might make you yearn for the G.Skill Trident Z RGB kit we also looked reviewed month (see p45), but these timings didn’t impact performance much, and both of these kits use Samsung’s B-die chips too. The ADATA heatsinks are fairly paltry and thin-feeling…

It offers the most wallet-friendly way of getting RGB memory SUPPLIER www.overclockers.co.uk/MODEL NUMBER TF1D416G3200HC16CDC01 Team Group’s Night Hawk RGB dual-channel kits officially range in speeds from 3000MHz up to 4000MHz, but in the UK you can only buy dual-channel kits up to 3200MHz at the moment. The modules look fantastic, though, even without the lighting. The huge wing-like heatsinks make the modules feel like they weigh twice as much as any other module on test – the build quality is fantastic. The downside, of course, is that the height of 53mm from base to top is nearly a whole centimetre taller than the G.Skill Trident Z RGB modules. It’s a tad excessive, so you won’t want a large CPU air cooler to be anywhere near the Night Hawk RGB…

How we test Ambidextrous mice have become a bit of a rarity these days. With most right-handed users preferring a mouse shaped specifically for that hand, and with lefties only making up around 10 per cent of the population, the market for them is limited. Being left-handed isn’t the only reason to go for such a mouse though. Some people (Ed: including this magazine’s editor), prefer the fit of an ambidextrous in the palm of their hand. Either way, while your options might be limited, the same isn’t true of the performance on offer. All the mice in this group test feature highly capable optical sensors, multiple buttons, precisely engineered ergonomics and a couple even have full RGB lighting. We’re looking for a comfortable shape that needs to be as…

SUPPLIER www.scan.co.uk The SteelSeries Sensei has been one of the most popular mouse ranges of the last decade, thanks to its comfortable ambidextrous design, exceptional performance, and basic but practical feature set. Now the Sensei has been reworked in the shape of the Sensei 310, with SteelSeries boldly claiming that it has ‘the world’s first true 1-to-1 eSports sensor’. What that claim means is that SteelSeries has worked with sensor manufacturer PixArt to create a sensor that doesn’t introduce latency, add interpolation or affect jitter reduction. Called the TrueMove3, it also boasts raw stats of a 12,000cpi resolution (SteelSeries lingo for dpi), with stated tracking of up to 350 inches per second. They’re certainly impressive stats, although they’re also not groundbreaking. And sure enough, we couldn’t really notice the…

Sometimes video games turn out very differently from how a designer originally intended. As with any creative process, the journey of a game from the designer’s head to the screen is a long and complicated process. A concept that initially seemed imaginatively flawless may prove unworkable in practice, while other ideas may come along during development that radically shift the direction of the project. Engine development is similarly iterative. As the technology responds to changes in the game, it too shifts and evolves, and the final result may end up looking entirely distinct from what was initially envisioned. Such is the case with Brigador, an isometric mech shooter from first-time development studio Stellar Jockeys. Work started in 2011, resulting in a five-year-long project that emerged radically altered from its conception.…

While you can theoretically use Windows Mixed Reality without using the Bluetooth controllers, that’s only true in the same way that you could, theoretically, use Windows without a keyboard. Little wonder, then, that if you buy a WMR headset from the Microsoft Store, they all come bundled with controllers. And, aside from the manufacturer’s logos, they’re all identical. That’s fine, because they’re comfortable to hold and look suitably futuristic, with the dots of light sprinkled around the edges lighting up to show they’re on and connected. In contrast to the simple console-style controllers of the Oculus Rift, there’s a panoply of controls here. There’s a touchpad, a thumbstick, plus various buttons at the back and side. All these controls shift function depending on the game and environment, which should make…

R EVI EW Allo DigiOne Player The Raspberry Pi could be an audiophile’s dream device, given its low cost, small size, low power draw and integrated network features, if it wasn’t for the fact that its audio capabilities simply aren’t that good. There’s nothing particularly terrible about the digital stream from its HDMI port, but anyone who has tried using the 3.5mm analogue output – especially since the switch to a combined tip-ring-ring-sleeve (TRRS) four-pole stereo audio and composite video jack – will be all too aware of its poor sound quality and high levels of noise. This drawback led to a cottage industry of products to add higher-quality audio to the Pi, but the DigiOne Player from Allo claims to stand head and shoulders above the competition. Based on…

15 years of water cooling Someone asked me recently when I built my first water-cooled PC and I had to think for a moment. It was actually a lot longer ago than I first realised, and I was slightly horrified to find it was 15 years ago. Back then, the industry was tiny and with far more of an emphasis on cooling than aesthetics, while the opposite is often true today. Components were little more than adapted aquarium and pond hardware, and there were even PCs that sported green hose tubing bought from garden centres. Heat was a major issue then, thanks to larger transistors and high voltages, as well as the fact that heatspreaders hadn’t made an appearance, at least on mainstream CPUs. The impact of water-cooling your hardware…

MILESTONES THIS MONTH TOP 20 OVERALL TOP 20 PRODUCERS WHAT IS FOLDING? Folding@home uses the spare processing cycles from your PC’s CPU and graphics cards for medical research. You can download the client from http://folding.stanford.edu and our team’s ID is 35947. Once you pass a significant milestone, you’ll get your name in the mag. You can also discuss folding with us and other readers online at the www.bit-tech.net forums.…